Information for Professionals

Basis Young People’s project (formerly known as Isis, part of Genesis) has been supporting girls and young women in Leeds who are being sexually or criminally exploited or at medium or high risk thereof for more than 20 years.

Since 2018 Basis Boys now also support boys and young men being exploited, sexually or otherwise.

Basis Young People also run an ex – service users group called “the Lionesses” for girls that are no longer or at low risk of CSE who meet regularly – facilitated by Basis Young People.

Below are some Frequently Asked Questions that we hope will help practitioners understand more about our Leeds service – please get in touch if you have any questions!

Frequently asked questions

You need to get the young person’s permission for the referral to be made.

Our referral form is simple and can be found below. Once you have filled it in with as much information as possible, send it to ypreferrals@basisyorkshire.org.uk (or get in touch for secure email contact details).

A referral in Leeds or Bradford is assessed as either Low, Medium or High risk of CSE using the same risk assessment tool used across West Yorkshire (see Leeds Children’s Safeguarding Board (LSCB).) Once assessed, we get in touch to let you know the outcome and whether your referral can get support immediately or needs to go on a waiting list or whether other forms of support might be available.

For Leeds, we have the capacity to work with all LS postcodes, WF10 and WF3 on an individual case management referral. We can take referrals for boys from across Leeds and Bradford. Our service in Hull works with boys and girls.

If the referral has been deemed as medium to high on the risk indicator tool then a referral should be made to the Duty Children’s Social Work Team as the new protocol states that social care must make an initial assessment of the young person.

Our specialist one to one work is made up of meetings with the young person at the place they feel most comfortable or where we can access them. We would normally see a young person once a week but this can change to meet learning styles and risk categories.

Our to one confidential sessions are made up of a selection of topics to help the young person identify that they are at risk, or involved in child sexual exploitation, including specialist resources on: understanding the grooming process, the grooming stages, different grooming models, internet safety, Sexting, pornography, equal consensual and respectful relationships (and how to identify an abusive relationship) – reducing their risks of being vulnerable and the dangers of being missing. Each intervention is tailored to the individual and reviewed on a regular basis to see whether their risk is reducing.

We maintain regular contact with the professional who has referred the young person and often attend multi agency professional meetings, child in need, child protection and strategy discussions. However the work we do is confidential so unless there was an immediate safeguarding concern we would never go into detail about what the young person had informed us that was personal to them.

There is no time limit to the work we do. It could be done in 12 weeks or we can extend it to include additional resources and emotional support for as long as the young person feels like they need it.

Yes, we have a resource called Sick Party which shows the party lifestyle of grooming for girls and Think Again for boys. It is used in our bespoke sessions and we have had fantastic feedback from young people and professionals alike! For primary school children we recommend Alright Charlie , accompanying workbook for young people and teacher and professionals guidance , developed with input from young people. See also Resources page on this website.

We also talk about resources that are available on our training courses. For more information on our training and resources visit our Training tab on this website. .